About ten years ago, I realized that my career in
publication was going backwards. I had imagined that, like most things,
it would be difficult at first, but afterwards increasingly easy. C'est
le premier pas qui coute, as the French say, the first step is the one
that costs. But in fact, it had been just the opposite. My earliest
essays, in 1972 and thereabouts, had been easy to publish. The later
ones were more difficult, and the latest, impossible. I refer to "Oral
Sex: A Theme in Donne and Some Cavalier Poets." In 1992 I sent this
essay to a famous journal published in Canada. When they had kept it a
year I asked them to send it back without further deliberation. The
editor answered that the essay had apparently got lost in the campus
mail, and he could not encourage me to send a second copy because it was
too specialized for his journal. So now people were rejecting my essays
without even reading them. I seemed to be writing against the grain,
getting on peoples' nerves.

I admit that to some extent this was intentional. Consider the
obscurity of the typical title of an essay in literary criticism:
"Polyversity and Multivariance: Balance and Dichotomy in the Later
Sonnets of G.M. Hopkins." Does the author really need all these uncouth
words to express what he has to say about some sonnets? The fact is that
those obscure essays do a kind of dance of the seven veils, gradually
revealing their glimmer of meaning near the end, but not in the early
paragraphs and certainly not in the title. In contrast, "Oral Sex: A
Theme in Donne..." is like something in the National Enquirer. I had a
meaning, I knew what it was, and I was putting it in the reader's face.

Doubtless you have noticed a section of the preface of a scholarly
book, often printed as a separate page, called "Acknowledgements." Here
are listed the names of anywhere from half-a-dozen to more than fifty
professors who, the author says, helped him in his work. I used to
wonder: how could you write anything, let alone a complete book, with
all these people coming into your office, and looking over your shoulder
and making suggestions? But in fact, these are the professors whose
approval of the book the author sought in advance and who are now
engaged to speak well of it once it is published. There is thus a
tendency over time for scholarly books to be written as if by huge
committees.

Though individuals are aided in furthering their careers by these
means, and publishers are reassured that they are publishing only
serious, responsible work--nothing wild--the danger remains obvious,
that all academic publication will tend towards a gray uniformity and
mediocrity. Literary criticism in particular has become so boring that
many university presses no longer publish it.

I was walking down 19th Avenue, brooding on these matters one day in
2000, when on a hoarding I saw a small poster: "All you need to own
your own website is something to say." From behind a black thundercloud a
glittering sunburst emitted the sound of distant trumpets--no, I shall
not degrade with bombastic metaphors a revelation so simple and so
strong. I should get my message across on the Internet, my message being
that the poetry and prose of 17th Century England were great in spite
of, and not because of, the influence of Christianity.

A cybernetic illiterate, I was aided by Heidi Ward, Chris Clark, and
the incomparable Elizabeth Sommers of the College of Humanities
computer staff in creating The Atheist Seventeenth Century Website. In
five months of this year it received 4,965 hits, which is beyond doubt a
far greater number than that of all the people who ever glanced at my
writing before. The website is still far short of my desire for I must
create a forum so my readers can dialogue with me and each other, but at
present it is a promising venture.

(The above was written four years ago; since, in 2004, I have finally made arrangements for the long desired forum.)